The CRA has issued a news release for those people affected by the recent fires in Alberta.

I called the CRA this afternoon to get a bit more information for one of my customers who has lost her home in Fort McMurray. I found out that the CRA has set up a Fort McMurray help line. Call the general phone line at 800-959-8281 (individuals) or 800-959-8281 (businesses) and ask to be transferred. The Fort McMurray help line is located in Calgary and currently open 8-6pm MST.

If you are affected by the fires and unable to file or pay your taxes on time, you can request taxpayer relief. You can submit your request by filing form RC4288.

Here are a few things I found out about the form:

Who should file this form? Individuals or businesses affected by the fires who are unable to file or pay their taxes on time. This includes sales tax and payroll tax. Complete one form per taxpayer/business.

When should I file this form? As soon as you get any notices with penalties and/or interest. If you haven’t filed your tax return yet, wait until you do so. Don’t file the form until/unless there are penalties and/or interest to waive.

How should I file this form? Mail your form to the Winnipeg Tax Centre. The address can be found on the bottom of the form. You can also submit the form online using the CRA My Business Account or My Account for Individuals if you have it set up. Anyone you have added as a representative (your accountant or bookkeeper for example) can also submit this form online. As of right now, requests are not being taking over the phone, but this could change.

What address should I use? Use any address where you’re currently getting mail. This does not have to match what the CRA has on file, it’s simply a mailing address.

What about section 3 – Supporting documentation? The form mentions a police/fire report and insurance statements. I was told that as of right now, the CRA doesn’t have a whole lot of information on what exactly will be required if you’re filing for relief. Call before filing to find out what is required.

This is the information I have as of today. I’m sure that the CRA is busy sorting out the particulars and getting agents up to speed on processes. Again, if you have any questions at all, please call the help line. They are very helpful. My heart goes out to all of those affected by the fire.

Customers, friends, and fellow bookkeepers, it’s that time again! I need your vote to become an Insightful Accountant Top 100 ProAdvisor for 2016. It’s one vote per person, and filling out the entire survey is optional. What’s required is your first name, last name, email, and a check-mark next to my name (alphabetical by last name, look for Marnie Stretch, I’m a ways down).

Voting is only one part of the process, so it’s not strictly a popularity contest (thank goodness!). It’s based on several other criteria including certifications, social media presence, relationships with third-party apps, and more.

I love helping people become knowledgeable in QuickBooks and business finances. And hopefully, I’ve helped you somewhere along the line, so you won’t mind taking a moment to cast a vote in my favor!

Thanks in advance, it would great to have this honor three years in a row.

This week, I’ve been noticing that the Job Credits for Small Business have been appearing in many of my customers’ CRA online accounts. I haven’t seen any refund cheques or deposits yet, but those should be starting to roll in soon.

You might remember the Hiring Credit for Small Business (HCSB) that was around for several years and ended in 2013. This is similar. One notable different is that the CRA will be sending out the refunds rather than having small businesses apply the credits to an upcoming payment.

What’s the Small Business Job Credit?

The Small Business Job Credit will effectively lower small businesses’ Employment Insurance (EI) premiums from the current legislated rate of $1.88 to $1.60 per $100 of insurable earnings in 2015 and 2016. Any firm that pays employer EI premiums equal to or less than $15,000 in those years will be eligible for the credit. Almost 90% of all EI premium-paying businesses in Canada will receive the credit, reducing their EI payroll taxes by nearly 15%.

THE PROBLEM:

I wrote a bonus paycheque using QBO Payroll and the calculations are wrong.

A NOTE:

Intuit payroll engineers are aware of this issue and are working on a resolution.

THE SCENARIO:

It’s December, a time for staff parties, office treats, and hopefully… bonuses! Today I sat down to issue one such paycheque in QBO. The president of the company wants to pay her hard-working husband a net discretionary bonus of $6000, so this will need to be grossed up. This employee is maxed out on his CPP contributions for the year and doesn’t contribute to EI. His federal and provincial TD1 amounts are set to the 2015 default amounts. His vacation policy is set to pay 9.6% each pay period. Discretionary bonuses are not vacationable in any of the provinces. If you want to confirm this, please check with your provincial department of labour. And make sure you know the difference between discretionary and non-discretionary bonuses (which are vacationable).

There are two ways to pay bonuses in QBO. The first way is to select ‘bonus’ as a pay type when setting up (or editing) the employee. I suggest using this method if you want to include non-discretionary bonuses on regular paycheques. The second way is to simply select Bonus only from the Run Payroll drop down menu when you want to issue a bonus.

Using the second method, I started a Bonus only payroll. Next, I chose to enter the bonus amount As net pay and clicked Continue. I entered $6,000 as the net bonus and realized that QBO is calculating gross pay in the amount of $14,658.38 which is not correct. If you recall, the employee is maxed out on CPP and EI, so the ‘grossed up’ amount of $8,082.38 is all income tax.

Additionally, QBO is calculating and adding vacation pay on the incorrect gross amount. No vacation pay should be added as discretionary bonuses are not vacationable. Unfortunately, there is no way to edit the paycheque to correct for either of these issues.

NOTE: I tried the same procedure using As gross pay and it appears that this is working correctly in terms of the income tax calculation. However, it is still adding vacation pay, which is incorrect.

THE FIX:

1. First, let’s add a new bonus policy:

From the Gear menu, choose Payroll Settings. Choose Vacation / Sick / PTO. From the Vacation and Sick Leave Policies box, choose Create to set up a new zero vacation item policy. Choose Vacation for the Category, use Bonus Zero for the description, select the Paid out each pay period radio button, add 0.0 to the Percent of pay earned. Click OK.

2. Next, let’s add the policy to the employee profile:

Choose Employees from the left hand navigation bar. Click on the name of the employee. Click on the blue pencil icon to the right of the word Pay. On number 4, use the drop down menu to select the Bonus Zero policy we added in step #1. Click Done on the bottom right.

3. Let’s pay the employee:

Run the bonus payroll by selecting Bonus only from the Run payroll drop down menu. Choose As net pay or As gross pay and click Continue. Select the employee(s) getting a bonus, and add the amount of the bonus (or net bonus) to the $ field. You can also add a memo if you want. Review the cheque by clicking on the blue pencil icon on the right. Confirm that the amounts are okay and click OK. You will return to the previous screen. Confirm the bank account and the pay date and select Preview payroll. On the next screen choose Submit payroll. On the next screen enter the cheque number and print pay stubs. Click Finish payroll.

4. Return the employee back to the original vacation policy:

Choose Employees from the left hand navigation bar. Click on the name of the employee. Click on the blue pencil icon to the right of the word Pay. On number 4, use the drop down menu to select the original vacation policy. Click Done on the bottom right.

SUMMARY:

This is my experience only. Yours may differ due to the many possible options in the company file, the payroll settings, and the employee profile. Use the CRA Payroll Deductions Online Calculator (PDOC) to calculate and compare figures if in doubt. And as always, consider trying it out in the test drive file first.

Today I searched like crazy for the Print later box while creating an invoice in QBO. I double checked my Company Settings to make sure that my preferred delivery method was Print later. It was. But all I could see was the Send later box at the top of the invoice. After some exploring, I finally found the Print later box. Click on the Print or Preview option at the bottom of the invoice, and you’ll see a check mark box:

HOW TO BATCH PRINT IN QBO

Once I had confirmed that my invoices were selected to be printed later, I went to find the print queue. But there isn’t one! Well, at least not like there is in desktop. Here’s how this functions in QBO. I’m using Chrome which is the preferred QBO browser.

First, go to Transactions on the left hand navigation bar. From the drop down menu, choose Sales. Click Filter. Choose Invoices for Type and Print later for Delivery Method. Click Apply.

This will show you all the invoices in your print queue. Simply choose the invoices you’d like to print by checking them off and selecting Print transactions from the Batch actions drop down menu.

Your invoices will open in another Google tab (all of them in the one tab – scroll down to view). Right click to select Print, choose your printer, then click on Print. When you click back over to QBO, notice the following screen. If everything has printed correctly, select Yes. To leave them in the queue, select No.

HOW TO GET RID OF INVOICES YOU DON’T WANT TO PRINT

Use this same method to remove invoices from the queue you don’t intend to print. Choose the invoices you want removed from the queue by checking them off. Choose Print transactions from the Batch actions. The invoices will open in another Google tab, just like in the previous example. Instead of printing, you’re going to close the tab that just opened. This takes you back to QBO and the message that appears in the screenshot above. You will be asked if you want to mark the selected transactions as printed. Say Yes. Your print queue should now be empty.

The nice thing about doing this in QBO (as opposed to desktop) is that you don’t have to ‘cheat’ printing the invoices to a PDF file. Note that this also works with sales receipts and expense transactions.

Sometimes it happens that you need to use your personal funds for a business purchase. There’s an easy way to get this entered into your QuickBooks data file whether you’re using the desktop version or QBO.

First, create a new credit card account. This account will be used to capture all purchases made by you using your personal funds (the method of payment doesn’t matter). If I was entering this into my own set of books, I would call it “Marnie’s Expenses” or something similar.

Then, using the Enter Credit Card Charges function found in the Banking menu (desktop) or Expense function found in the quick create menu (QBO), enter the details of the purchase (date, vendor, amount, account, etc.) using the new credit card account you just created. If you want, you can add the payment method in the memo field (i.e. Debit, Cheque No., Cash, Amex, etc). Continue entering all your personal funds purchases this way. The transactions will accumulate in this account.

When you are reimbursing yourself for these purchases, simply write yourself a cheque for the total amount in the account, coding it to the new credit card account. This will zero out the account.

If you want to let these purchases end up in Shareholder Loan (or Owner’s Equity) account, you will need to journal the amount over to that account periodically. You will Debit the Credit Card Account and Credit the Shareholder Loan account. I suggest monthly, but be sure to do it at your fiscal year end so that the balance in the new credit card account is zero.

Happy New Year! We’re a few days into 2015, and I’ve come across several client files where the current Federal and Provincial TD1 amounts are NOT updating. This is a known issue in QuickBooks desktop and hopefully there will be a fix soon.

First things thing. Please make sure you have the latest tax table installed in your software by going to Employees < My Payroll Service > Tax Tables Updates. Here’s a link explaining this in greater detail:

Now that you’ve confirmed you have the latest tax table, it’s important that you check your TD1 Review List to make your employees have been updated with the current Federal and Provincial amounts. I run this report before running payroll at the start of every new calendar year. Here’s how to check:

Reports > Employees & Payroll > TD1 Review List

You will see a list of your employees. The columns contain the Payroll Province and Federal and Provincial ‘Current’ and ‘Suggested’ TD1. If the ‘Current’ doesn’t match the ‘Suggested,’double click on the amount. You will now be in the Taxes and TD1 for (Employee Name) window. Override the incorrect ‘Current’ amounts with the correct ‘Suggested’ amounts. NOTE: if you’ve ever used a ‘Custom’ amount (in other words, you’ve entered something other than the basic default amount into the employee profile), this amount will ALWAYS need to be manually updated, unless you change back to the basic ‘Suggested’ amount (and the updates are working properly). Now would be a good time to hand your ‘Custom Amount’ employees a blank Federal and Provincial TD1 form so you can update their tax credits in Quickbooks. Here’s the link to the forms for 2015:

It’s worth noting that “Individuals do not have to complete a new TD1 every year unless there is a change to their federal, provincial or territorial personal tax credit amounts. If a change happens, they must complete a new form no later than seven days after the change.” This is from the following page on the CRA website where you’ll find more information about form TD1: